Local AI Assistant v2 is here: a private AI chat that never leaves your machine

Today we're releasing Local AI Assistant v2 — a ground-up rebuild of our on-device chat app on the cross-platform AI Suite v2 stack, replacing the older Windows-only listing. The idea hasn't changed: a private AI chat that runs on your own machine. Everything underneath it is new.

What it does

Pick a model, type a message, and a local AI model streams the reply back on your own device as it writes it — no round-trip to someone else's server. Your messages aren't uploaded with a local model, and once the model is downloaded the whole app works offline. Your conversations are saved encrypted at rest on disk, and you never need an account to use the free tier.

It's deliberately slim. You get a clean chat and the essentials, with nothing else in the way: keep as many separate conversations as you like in a flat session list, find a phrase within the current chat or search across all your chats and jump to a match, and tune each conversation with two context controls — a creativity (temperature) dial and a maximum reply length. There are no tool panels, no web search, no document drop-zone and no folders to manage. Just the conversation.

New in v2

• Focused, on-device chat. Pick a model, type, and watch the reply stream in real time — stop it any time. The whole thing runs locally on a capable on-device model.
• Many private sessions. Every conversation is its own saved chat in a clean, flat list; rename, pin and delete. Sessions and messages are kept encrypted at rest on your device.
• Find and search. Find a phrase within the current chat, or search across all of your chats and jump straight to a match.
• Two context controls. A creativity (temperature) dial and a maximum reply length, set per chat or as your defaults — simple, and always one click away.
• Your choice of models. A capable on-device model is selected and downloaded automatically on first launch — no setup, no sign-up, and a lighter model is chosen on its own for lower-memory machines. Pro unlocks larger local models and optional cloud providers.
• In 16 languages, and scriptable. The interface follows your operating system's language. A headless command-line tool runs the same chat from the terminal for power users and automation.

Every feature is free

Here's the part we're proudest of: no feature is locked behind Pro. Sessions, encrypted history, find and search, the context controls, and backup, restore and export are all in the free app, running on a capable on-device model with no time limit or nag screens. Pro is simply about choice of model — larger local models and optional cloud providers when you want extra power. The tier gates the model, never a feature, so you never lose a capability by staying on the free tier.

Why on-device matters

The questions people most want to ask an AI are often the ones that can't go to the cloud — a draft email about a personnel issue, a contract clause, a half-formed idea you'd rather not hand to a third party. Local AI Assistant brings the model to your words instead: nothing leaves the device with a local model, your history is encrypted at rest, and there are no per-message usage fees. That makes it a fit for privacy-conscious users, regulated industries where prompts and replies can't leave managed hardware, and offline or air-gapped setups. It's the same on-premises, privacy-first principle behind everything Software Tailor builds ^[1].

It's a different shape of app from our full chatbot on purpose. If you want tools, web search, document chat, memory or folders, those live in the larger AI Chatbot; Local AI Assistant is the chat itself, kept clean. Its sibling, AI Reasoning, is the same slim shell tuned for models that think step by step.

Get it

Local AI Assistant v2 is available now on the Microsoft Store for Windows as a free download, with Pro available when you want larger and cloud models ^[2]. A headless CLI ships alongside it for power users; editions for macOS, Linux, browser and mobile are on the roadmap. Read the full feature tour on the product page.

References

1. Software Tailor. "Local AI Assistant — product page." softwaretailor.com/ai-assistant.htm. Accessed 2026-06-27.
2. Microsoft. "Local AI Assistant on the Microsoft Store." apps.microsoft.com/detail/9N9L7MZ02T2N. Accessed 2026-06-27.

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